It's a bad idea for the federal government to take over our free market health care industry. Although promised otherwise, millions of frightened Americans are seeing their
health insurance plans cancelled because they do not include unwanted and expensive coverage mandated by the new one-size-fits-all health care law.

One alternative to ObamaCare is to allow families to shop across state lines to buy the
health insurance that fits our needs at a price we can afford, just like purchasing automobile insurance. Small businesses should also be allowed to band together to buy coverage.

Shenna Bellows:
Supports ObamaCare & universal health coverage

I Support Universal Health Coverage: My mother went back to school to become a nurse, and I've seen up close how much good we can do in Maine when we expand healthcare coverage. I support universal access to affordable healthcare for all
Americans including acute, chronic, preventative, and long-term care. The Affordable Care Act is an important first step toward universal coverage, but it needs to be improved to expand coverage to all people and simplify the process for signing up.

Protecting Patients and Ending the Repeal Debate: Republican Susan Collins voted against the Affordable Care Act and continues to call for full repeal of the law years after it became law--without offering a replacement solution.

Expanding
Medicare and Medicaid: The federal government should be negotiating drug prices directly with pharmaceutical companies, which would reduce costs for patients and save us billions of taxpayer dollars a year that now pad Big Pharma's bottom line.

Eliot Cutler:
Universal access to essential health care services

Whether they are old or young, employed or unemployed, and wherever they live, all Mainers should have access to preventive health care--because it is the right, fair and morally responsible thing to do, and because it is the financially and economically
smart thing to do. With universal access to essential health care services, Maine can muscle down our health care costs--while staying in the top tier of America's healthiest places and making Maine more competitive as a place to live and to work.

Cynthia Dill:
Medicaid and Medicare programs need to be strengthened

Maine Sen. Cynthia Dill and former Secretary of State Matt Dunlap defended the social programs and instead said they would look to taxation reforms and cuts in military spending as ways to balance the federal budget.

Dill called for fair tax policies that require the wealthy to pay their fair share, and cuts in military spending such as for weapons systems. "When it comes to Medicaid and Medicare, those are programs that need to be strengthened," she said.

Our next senator must help provide families relief from the increasing burden of health care, not with Obamacare, but with common sense solutions like allowing businesses and individuals to purchase health insurance
like any other insurance, from the lowest cost provider anywhere in the United States and making the cost of that insurance like the cost of a mortgage, 100% deductible from an individual's federal income tax.

Matt Dunlap:
ObamaCare individual mandate is constitutional

On energy, the candidates agreed that Maine's next U.S. senator should work hard to maintain federal low-income heating assistance because of the large number of Maine families that can't afford to fill their oil tanks and heat leaky homes.
They also agreed that the government should invest in weatherization programs to reduce the need for heating oil over the long term.

Based on ability to pay, we ask MaineCare recipients to contribute to the cost of the state-sponsored health care coverage. Unfortunately, we are limited in the reforms we can offer in MaineCare because of the Affordable Care Act out of Washington.
Maine's generosity is being penalized by the federal government. There are additional savings to be had in MaineCare but federal mandates force us to look elsewhere.

Source: Maine 2011 State of the State Address
Feb 10, 2011

John Baldacci:
Ensure access to basic health care

Indicate which principles you support regarding health.

Ensure that citizens have access to basic health care through managed care, insurance reforms, or state-funded care where necessary.